Kangaroo Notebook

Kangaroo Notebook (1993) is the first Kobo Abe novel I read, and it is still my favourite—that is, alongside Secret Rendezvous, to which it bears a remarkable likeness. Among other things, each concerns medical infrastructure and the protagonist’s Sisyphean journey that nevertheless concludes with entrapment in a confined space. If you haven’t read either novel, this is not a spoiler: especially from The Box Man (1973) onward, Abe’s work belongs to a school that proclaims narrative tension—along with character development and believability—among the least interesting things a novel can achieve…